Aidy Bryant debuted her impression of White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders this past weekend on “Saturday Night Live” and ―big shocker ― not everyone is happy about it.
“For those of you who don’t know me yet, my father is Mike Huckabee and my mother is a big southern hamburger,” Bryant-as-Sanders told the press pool in a deep southern drawl during the skit.
While the the skit was fairly complimentary toward Sanders, dubbing her “articulate and charming” and an improvement over Sean Spicer, it seems her father, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, was not amused.
“I thought it was a little bit silly, sexist, [and] misogynist, but my daughter is certainly capable of handling a whole lot worse than that,” Huckabee said on the Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co” on Tuesday.
Other commentators claimed the skit fat-shamed the deputy press secretary.
“You guys were mean about Huckabee Sanders,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo said on Monday. “You were fat-shaming her. You were talking about how she looks and what she wears. I thought that it was mean, not funny.”
He added, “They had her eating. I thought it was in poor taste.”
Cuomo is referring to the show’s decision to have Bryant eating an apple when she reappears at the podium after being kicked off the stage by Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer.
The apple was no doubt a strange choice, but it’s hard to argue with the fact that casting Bryant as Huckabee Sanders is pretty spot-on. And if there’s any fat-shaming going on, it was coming from Cuomo, who probably owes Bryant an apology.
As for joking about how Sanders looks and what she wears, that’s likely a reference to the Weekend Update segment on Saturday’s episode, in which host Colin Jost took a swing at her.
“Spicer’s thirsty understudy Sarah Huckabee Sanders said James Comey had committed basic atrocities while he was head of the FBI, like reopening the Hillary Clinton investigation,” said Jost. “But that’s not a basic atrocity. A basic atrocities is when you post a brunch photo that says, ‘Pizza is life.’ Or when your profile pic is you on an inflatable swan. Basic Atrocities, by the way, is also where Sarah Huckabee Sanders gets her wardrobe.”
Yes, this is horribly sexist, regardless of the fact that Sean Spicer’s terrible sense of style is routinely dissected in the news. Horribly sexist.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.